every night of the month to break even. A couple restaurants around here with similar price points were packed every night and still folded. College kids, grad students, and Russian grandmothers aren't the biggest spenders, you see.

If only you realized the vacant property is leverage against the taxes of the owners and written off to reduce their tax liability.

Theres not many one man or small family run real estate rackets anymore. For most of these guys it pays to keep 20% of their rental property vacant. So they ask for high rents till somone pays, then they raise the price on one of their lower end properties to force people out and get the tax break. Rinse, repeat.

Sure, it should be illegal. But "big government" is a scary misnomer than an actual functioning community and laws that promote small business over wallstreet and Oligarchs.

Neither do you.
Losses are written off against profits, true. Tax liability is based on...profits. If you ain't getting any income, you have no profits to write expenses off against. Is it a loss? Yup. Your loss.

"Sure, it should be illegal. But "big government" is a scary misnomer than an actual functioning community and laws that promote small business over wallstreet and Oligarchs."
I still have no idea what you're talking about. Talking points is not the same as making sense.
If you are a 'small property owner', then you try to maximize your profit. That's called 'capitalism' or 'making a living'. Yes, you have expenses. You can charge those expenses against your profit.
A carpenter can charge the cost of his sawblades and stuff against his earned income.
But, if you intentionally keep a premises vacant hoping for greater income down the road, that's not a 'clever tax thing'. That's 'losing money hoping to make more down the road'.

Earlier this year, it was Tapeo, and now it's Chilli Duck, forced out by the high rents on Newbury and Boylston. These landlords only want to rent to the chains, so that's what we'll end up with. Fortunately, we still have Asta, Piattini, Select, and a few other excellent independent operators who haven't been forced out -- but for how long?

Prompting the vacating of your property. Every month a property sits vacant, it's effectively losing thousands of dollars in rent not being paid.

Say the rent for a space is $2,000 a month, and the current tenant is steadily covering that. The landlord decides that he/she wants to squeeze out an extra $500 a month, so they raise the rent, anticipating an extra $6,000 a year in income. However, that's just enough to push their steady reliable tenant off the edge and out of business. In order for this increase not to become an immediate loss to the property owner, they would have to replace that tenant with a new $2,500 a month tenant within 8-10 weeks. Which rarely happens with move-out/move-in of different businesses.

If it sits vacant for say 4 months during the transition, the owner has lost $8,000 in four months by running off his tenant. So you can do the math re how many of those $500-more months with a new unknown and untested tenant are going to be needed to make up for this.

Smart landlords don't do this. (Besides the ethics of driving a good tenant out of business . . )

You can't write off a vacant property. You can deduct property taxes, up to $10k, from your federal return, but leaving a storefront vacant doesn't magically create money.

$20k in tax savings? How on earth do you figure? Even if you could write of $8k of "non income" (news flash: you can't), you would only be able to deduct your marginal rate. Let's assume the business pays 20%, so there you get to deduct only $1.6k.

But again, you can't deduct "non income". If that was the case I'd start deducting the many millions of dollars I'm not earning and not pay a dime in taxes.

In middle of nowhere Wyoming, maybe...maybe... you could find a problem that's the result of too little government. Around here, it's a guaranteed bet that nearly every problem you find is the result of too much government. Across the border to the north...it'd be a 50/50 proposition.

Aww man, sad to see this, Chilli Duck was my go-to for Thai when I lived in the Back Bay. I suppose this was inevitable. The little guys always get chewed up, especially on a corridor like Boylston. I hope the owners find a more affordable spot in a different neighborhood, because their food was great.

Maybe not the place you remember. They were sold about five years ago, the staff quit (rumor was, en masse during lunchtime service), and the service and food went downhill quick. I used to eat there several times a week, but it was a sad, fast decline. Honestly surprised they managed to stay open this long.